People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1895 — PARTIES BREAKING. [ARTICLE]

PARTIES BREAKING.

CONFUSION REIGNS IN THS TWO OLD CAMPS. Let the Advocate* of Free Coinage Come to the- People's Party—We Are the Original Free Silver Party of the Country. The “Kilkenny” cat fight now raging between the two wings of the hard or metal money factions is interesting and amusing to Populists. It is to be hoped that it will end in both factions killing each other; and introduce to our nation and the world the true money of civilization. Metal money is a relic of barbarism. It is property money or intrinsic value*money. It is the hot-bed that produces usury, for if money is property it is right to buy and sell it. The metallic base for all money to stand op has deceived and blinded the world on the money question for thousands of years. Dealing in money is the result. Money is desigped to do business with, and not to deal in. The true function of money is to express the value in labor of all articles to be exchanged. Money has no more right to fix and regulate prices of property created by labor than it has to fix and regulate the weather. Labor does that, or ought to; for labor is the first price paid for air property. These are trite phrases and stale to reformers, but as there is an unusual awakening on the money question now, and the great marjority of voters have not investigated the question, we need to repeat “line upon line and precept Upon precept," and hold up first principles before their eyes continually. The people have been deceived so long by the money mongers that they evidently think they can keep them deceived. Indeed it looks as if the high priests of the golden calf were deceived themselves. You have heard of wags tefllng big yarns to make children and fools stare, and repeating them until they believed them, and then told them for truth. These advocates of the gold standard say that the material used for money is the money. They tell us that if the material is not worth its legal face value, that it is dishonest money. They teach that law don’t amount to anything in making mopey. Bean-soup Atkinson, one of their champion high priests, uses what he calls the “hammer argument.” It is; Lay a gold coin on the anvil and hammer it, and the gold is worth as much as it was before; but lay a silver coin on the anvil and hammer it, and it is worth only about half as much as it was. Wasn’t that a sledge-hammer argument though? If he had a debt to pay to some sheriff he would discover that his hammered gold was not money. “ If I had a ten-year old boy that had no more sense than to publish such a ’ thing in a great city daily paper I would try to hammer a little sense into his head. .It is almost incredible to believe that the whole ti*ibe of gold bug money mongers believe such twaddle —that they really don’t know that money is one thing and the materail used for making it another —but if they don’t believe these foolish, absurd, puerile things, then they are a set of awful big liars, for they claim to believe them.

This war that is splitting the two old parties is a god-send. Reformers have tried for a score of years to get the eyes of the people open, but the party chains were too strong. Now confusion reigns in the two old rotten camps. It is the golden opportunity* for ttfe People’s party. Only keep in the middle of the road, and victory is is sure. Let the advocates of the free coinage of silver come into our camp. The door is wide open. If they won’t come let them stay where they are, for the People’s party is working for reform from bottom to top, inside and out, We want government ownership of all monopolies. If we could get free coinage of silver, as we had it before 1873, and leave the monopolies owning the government, as they now do, we would gain nothing scarcely. The Omaha platform in full, with the initiative and referendum added, is what we need. We want voters, provided they are thoroughly converted. We want educated soldiers that will stand by our flag through thick and thin; men who cannot be bought, who will not compromise for the sake of present success. “As God is God and right is right; The right is sure to win; To hesitate is cowardice, To falter, that is sin.” —Rev. R. D. Oglesby, in Chicago Express.

The banks in. the east are loaning money to each other at one and two per cent interest, to try to deceive the people into the belief that money is plenty and easy to be had under a gold standard system of finance. In this they will hardly succeed inasmuch as everybody knows that the western and southern banks will not loan money at any rate except to depositors, and regular depositors. They do prove, however, that the people could loan money to each other at two per cent interest , and that is one of the Omaha platform demands. A careful count of the next house of congress shows that of the 244 republicans 220 are against free silver, while of the 105 democrats 30 are against it. There is a majority of 151 in the two old parties against it. If a careful poll j of the people was taken it would'be I found that they favored it by at least. 3 to 1. < . [ When it comes to a fight that means anything in either one of the old : ratios the gold bugs always win.